undergraduate

Our Undergraduate Ultrasound Curriculum at a glance

Our Undergraduate Ultrasound curriculum is divided into two parts: pre-clerkship (year 1 and 2) and clerkship (years 3 and 4). Scroll through the page below for an overview as well as helpful links and documents!

Pre-clerkship

During the first two years of medical training, students are introduced to ultrasound in both the anatomy and clinical skills courses. The focus here is on ultrasound basics (physics, knobology, image interpretation and image generation) with all of the sessions being hands-on and supervised.

Here are some important links to tutorials and other material related to the undergraduate ultrasound curriculum

3. Our recommended text is Essentials of Point of Care Ultrasound by Socransky and Wiss (available on iBooks here )

Clerkship

By this stage, all students have completed approximately 10 hours of supervised, hands-on ultrasound training. Additionally, all students have had to prepare for OSCEs which may include POCUS stations (this could be compared to the amount of experience a clinician would have upon completing an intensive POCUS course in Canada). Students are now ready to move onto the next stage of training – mastery of image generation and clinical integration of core POCUS applications.

Clerkship Year 1

As part of the “Selected Topics in Medicine” curriculum (academic half day during clerkship), clerkship students will be introduced to the topic of Shock and the use of clinical ultrasonography (resuscitative ultrasound) in the initial assessment and work up of shock patients. Details here: intro-to-sound-resuscitation

Point of Care Ultrasound objectives are also currently being integrated in the EM and Anesthesia rotations. Here the focus shifts to clinical integration – learners are expected to understand how POCUS is integrated into common scenarios such as Trauma and procedural guidance, learning both the strengths and limitations of the modality.

All Clerkship students can now start logging their scans using the sheet below (creating their own logbook). While any and all POCUS experiences can and should be recorded, students are encouraged to focus on those skills that have been taught in the Clinical Skills curriculum: scanning for pericardial effusion (50 scans), pleural effusion (20 scans), free fluid in the abdomen (50 scans), urological ultrasound for hydronephrosis (30 scans) and bladder volume (10 scans). Non-supervised scans (which can make up to 50% of a students portfolio) will need to be accompanied by saved images that include the following patient information: initials on screen, date of examination on screen, well visualized findings (clips and stills will be considered). Instructions on downloading images from the ED machines can be found on the clipboards attached to the machines at the RUH and SPH ERs. logbook

EchoLog app is live and is a convenient way to log your scans on your smartphone (iOS only at this time) – check out: https://goo.gl/cPhIIe

Clerkship Year 2

After completion of the above scans (pre-requisite), students will be eligible to apply for the Clinical Ultrasound Elective in Clerkship (CUSEC) in 4th year (second year of clerkship). This is a 2-week intensive rotation which includes a competency assessment.